Clarett holds door open for Williams

Ira Miller

Published
4:00 am PDT, Monday, April 19, 2004

It's known as the Maurice Clarett lawsuit, but the winner likely will be Mike Williams.

Williams, a USC wide receiver, rode Clarett's coattails into the NFL Draft. Williams is expected to be drafted in the first round Saturday. Clarett, a former Ohio State running back who played only one year of college football, might not be drafted on the first day.

This assumes, of course, that a February ruling by a federal judge holds, allowing Clarett and Williams to be eligible for the draft. Given the NFL's record in court, the likelihood is that it will. The league's appeal is scheduled to be heard by a court in New York this week.

Under the NFL rules, a draft-eligible player must be three years' removed from high school. Clarett is two years' removed, as is Williams. The league says younger players are neither physically nor emotionally developed enough for the pounding they would take in pro football. The judge said that was not a good enough reason to keep them out.

The league has a point, but it's not the real reason it is fighting to retain the rules.

Allowing high school and younger college players into the draft would take some players from college football, and that concerns the NFL and college coaches -- although it is difficult to make an argument that college basketball has been harmed by early-entrant draft players.

The colleges don't want their players leaving early. The NFL doesn't want to have to start scouting high school players. And relations between the NFL and college football are, to say the least, quite cozy. College football provides the pros with a free farm system that not only develops players, but gets tons of valuable, free publicity to make them household names even before they reach the NFL. The league doesn't want anything to disturb that arrangement.

"My biggest concern as a former college (assistant) coach is that for every Maurice Clarett, there's going to be a dozen other guys that see this as an easy avenue to, 'I don't want to go to class anymore, I didn't do well last semester, I don't like my coach,' all those things you fight through as a college kid," Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick said.

"Now it's another easy out. Someone will convince him he can be drafted and the guy falls off the face of the earth with nothing to fall back on."

The fact of the matter is, however, that even the expected final court decision favoring Clarett is not likely to change much.

His lawsuit did not lead a flood of younger players into the draft.

Besides Clarett and Williams, only seven otherwise ineligible players got their names entered into the draft pool, and none is expected to be selected. Six are high school players. The other is Ronnie McCrae, a defensive back from Pasadena City College who played only one season of junior-college football, without particular distinction.

It's not likely the early-entrant group in the NFL ever would become large because, even under the league's old rules, few rookies were able to make a big impact.

Teenagers always have been welcome in baseball and hockey, and in recent years they've been coming into the NBA too. But none of the other sports involves the physical stress of the NFL. And high school basketball players, to cite one example, first can test themselves against pros in a summer league. There is no comparable experience in football.

"It's a different game in football," St. Louis Rams general manager Charley Armey said. "Everybody says they do it in baseball. But you only read about the ones who make it. If you look at the percentage of kids who fail in baseball ... it's astronomical.

"Football is more of a physical thing, being able to take the rigors, and there aren't many kids who can do it. They're just not physically developed enough to do it."

As an Ohio State freshman in 2002, Clarett helped his team win the national championship. But he missed three games because of shoulder and knee injuries. Then he was ruled ineligible for the 2003 season for accepting improper benefits and lying about it to NCAA and university investigators.

Clarett's attitude turned off some NFL teams; others question his work ethic and maturity. Like many of the top-rated draft prospects, he refused to work out at the scouting combine in Indianapolis in February. Unlike some of the others, however, he still appeared overweight and out of shape when he held a private campus workout later.

At best, it was thought Clarett would be drafted in the second round. That's hardly a sure thing anymore.

"He's a wild card in the draft," one NFL general manager said. "He could go the second day."

Three rounds are conducted on Saturday, the final four rounds on Sunday.

Williams, however, is rated in the first tier of receivers, although clearly behind Larry Fitzgerald and Roy Williams.

Whatever the appeals court decides this week, the ruling is certain to be appealed; the NFL says it would hold a supplemental draft later in the spring should Clarett and Williams be barred from the draft by the appeals court now and later allowed back in.

The bigger winner
It should be easier for Mike Williams to make an impact at receiver than
for Maurice Clarett at running back:
Clarett Williams
Age 20 20
Height 5-11 6-4
Weight 237 233
40-time 4.55 4.62